Fourteen
The rain had stopped, and the grounds crew was wiping off the benches and the rides to dry everything by opening in a half hour. As I was on my way to delivering Marcus’s and Adele’s summonses of doom, I tried to cheer myself up by thinking how happy all the little kids on their way to Fairyland would be now that the sun was out. One more reminder why it was important to keep positive and remember that this internship was the coolest of summer jobs—even if my boss was crazy.
I crossed the soggy Fiddler’s Green on my way to the boys’ dorm and, at its top floor, the Princes’ Tower, where Marcus was likely still fast asleep. I was about to wave to Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall and eating a breakfast burrito when I caught sight of Ian headed my way in his thigh-high boots.
His wavy black hair blew back in the morning breeze as his green cape whipped behind him. Were it not for the cat head under his arm, he’d have easily been mistaken for a prince.
“Ah, I see you survived okay,” he said, greeting me with a wide grin.
After our walk the night before, it felt like we were sharing a secret joke—and were simply waiting for the punch line so we could finally laugh.
“I guess I managed to avoid being attacked by fierce wild beasts, thanks to your trusty penlight.”
“That penlight’s gotten me out of many a tight spot. I still think you should have come with me to the party.”
I kept walking toward the dorms. “Yeah, how was it?”
“Awesome, if you’re into listening to princesses debate the virtues of Vaselining your teeth for faster smiles. Otherwise . . . pretty boring.” He leaned toward me. “It would have been much more fun with you there.”
This time, in the broad light of day, I was unable to hide my blush, and Ian must have noticed, because he smiled and said, “So there’s hope.”
“For what?”
He shrugged, his long legs taking lengthy strides. “We’ll see.”
“You’re weird, you know that?” I was careful to keep my head down out of fear that if I looked into his eyes, I might give myself away. “Where are you off to, anyway? You usually don’t do the morning shift.”
I winced, since that showed I’d been following his schedule like I was crushing. Which I might have been.
“Are you keeping track of my whereabouts?”
“I’m the Queen’s assistant. It’s my job.” As if.
“Then you probably know that my days of running around the park as a semipsychopathic feline with narcissistic personality tendencies have come to an end.” We stopped at the entrance to the boys’ dorm.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re looking at the newest Prince Charming.” He gave a low bow.
I dropped my jaw. “How did this happen?”
“Can’t tell you.” He zipped his lips. “However, I will say you played a part. After you told me that I was a suspected traitor, I went to the Queen, and we talked and”—he shrugged—“she promoted me to prince!”
So he was the informant!
At that moment every positive thought about Ian vanished. I could feel my heart break under the realization that he had lied about another cast member in order to get a promotion that would make him eligible for the Dream & Do grant. He was no better than the grasping, ambitious types like Jake the Hansel. Actually he was worse. At least Jake the Hansel reported something he’d seen and overheard.
Ian couldn’t have seen or overheard anything. He’d been with me at 11:59 the night before, thereby making it impossible for him to have caught Marcus in the Forbidden Zone when the Queen said the snitch reportedly saw him.
I was so pissed, so outraged that he could have used me in his scheme, that it was all I could do to keep from wiping that perpetual grin off his face with a good, hard slap.
“Psychopath is right,” I snapped. “Thanks to you, Marcus is being kicked out of the program.”
Ian’s face fell. “The Queen didn’t say she would do that.”
“You read the memo. What did you think would happen?” I jammed my master key into the boys’ dorm lock, fumbling a bit because the key didn’t quite fit.
Ian leaned over and opened the door for me with his swipe card. “Here.”
I can’t believe how wrong I’ve been about him, I thought as I yanked open the door and swung around so hard, my pearl tiara nearly flew off. “I hope it’s worth it, Ian. From every fairy tale I’ve read, there’s a seriously heavy price to pay—when you sell your soul.”
I had to take a few minutes in the stairwell of the boys’ dorm to get my act together. I could not let my summer be ruined by a jerk like Ian Davidson, and I shouldn’t beat myself up for being fooled by a dark-haired, sweet-talking boy with laughing half-moon eyes. I wasn’t the first girl to fall for a guy just because he was Abercrombie hot, and I wouldn’t be the last.
Chalk it up to experience and moveon.org.
Right.
I gathered my strength and forced myself to get back to doing my job—as unpleasant as it currently was.
Even though this was my umpteenth trip to the Princes’ Tower—most often to wake Marcus—I was still struck by the luxuriousness of these dorms compared to the Ordinary Cast Members digs one floor below. There, the hallways were narrow and stank of sweaty armpits and pitted-out sneakers, the time-worn walls covered with graffiti concerning unfavorable attributes of Rumpelstiltskin.
Here in the princes’ quarters, everything was plush, with thick blue carpeting and crystal chandeliers. If you ask me, it was almost too ritzy for a bunch of seventeen-year-old boys.
And yet I couldn’t help thinking that behind one of these doors was the real traitor—I mean, the real Prince Charming—who’d saved me twice, if his directions last night out of the Forbidden Zone counted as a form of rescue, too.
All I had to do was use the master key to open each room and find that shirt, and I’d know for sure. The answer was practically inches away.
The hall was deathly quiet, the princes either working in the park or working out in the gym. My palms itched as I fingered the key that was begging to be used. I might have resisted its temptation if the first door I saw hadn’t been marked: Dash Merrill.
Here’s what was odd: Orientation aside, Dash and I hardly spoke except when we bumped into each other at the salad bar. Mostly he acted like I didn’t exist. He was either off with Valerie or hanging with his prince bros. I used to think he was just stuck-up, but if he were the real prince and careful about his connections, perhaps he was keeping his distance to protect me.
I put my ear to the door. Nothing. Dash usually did the first shift with Valerie, so it was a safe bet that I could search his stuff with impunity. Anyway, if I happened to be caught, I had a ready excuse: I was trying to find Marcus and had somehow ended up in the wrong room. Completely understandable.
Quietly I removed my key and placed it in the lock, snapping it open easily. With one last check down the hall, I stepped inside and closed the door silently.
The room was surprisingly messy for such a well-kept guy. I picked through the heap of clothes on the floor, avoiding several pairs of plaid boxers. Under the boxers were books, and under the books were jeans, and under the jeans were more books, and under them, shirts. I was like an archaeologist digging through teenage-male debris in search of the holy grail: one very Seattleish black flannel shirt.
Nothing there, I knelt to search under the bed, since it made sense that a person in such a precarious position would try to hide the evidence. As far as I could tell, there were several dust bunnies but no shirt.
Had he hidden it in his luggage? I walked over to the closet for a look-see.
Sure enough, there was a dark-green backpack. I thrust my arm deep inside and rustled around. Contact case. (He wore glasses?) A bottle of leaking sunscreen. Ick! And . . .
“Can I help you?”
Crap. Trolls!
I yanked my hand out of the backpack, wiped the sunscreen on my dress, and came out of the closet to find none other than Dash Merrill himself recently returned from the shower, dripping wet, with only a rather small white towel wrapped around his hips.
Gentle Reader: I have not led a sheltered life. I’m a frequent beachgoer, and I’ve seen plenty of guys with their shirts off. And some I’d literally pay good money to put their shirts on. Dash did not fall into that latter category, because he was Dash Merrill and his body was amazing. Smooth chest. Impressive shoulders. Muscular in a natural, i.e., not weird iron-pumping way.
“Hi!” I held up my hand dripping with white sunblock, mortification seeping through my pores.
I realized then that “looking for Marcus” wasn’t going to cut it, as it was very rare to find normal high school seniors, even those of questionable intelligence, hanging out in their friends’ backpacks. In their closets.
Dash closed the door behind him. “You mind, uh, explaining what’s going on?”
“What?” I said innocently.
He pointed to the closet. “You going through my pack.”
“Was I going through your pack?” I conjured a dismissive chuckle. “No, no. Hardly. The Queen asked me to do a spot-check for illicit food.” I dropped my voice and cupped my mouth in confidentiality. “Apparently we have a bit of a problemus rodentis.”
He wasn’t buying my ruse. “Shouldn’t that be Maintenance’s thing?”
“It will be, if we find the mice.”
“I thought you just said there’s a rodent problem.”
“An alleged rodent problem. You have to stay on top of these things, you know, if you don’t want to be infested with rats.”
Dash tossed his black Dopp kit on the bed. “Gee,” he said, keeping a tight clutch on that towel. “And here I thought you were searching for something else.”
I swallowed hard. Was he implying what I thought he was implying? “Nope. Just food, other than, of course, Marcus.”
“Marcus?” He raised an eyebrow. “In my closet?”
“Or thereabouts.” The trick was to keep your tone calm and even.
“Marcus isn’t here. He’s down in Wardrobe getting his coat altered. If you hold on a minute, I’ll take you there.”
I started to say that wasn’t necessary, since I went to Wardrobe twice a day and obviously knew the territory, but Dash insisted. “If you wouldn’t mind turning your head . . .”
Had I been staring? Oh my. Red-faced, I stepped inside the closet again and closed the door while outside, inches away, Dash slipped into one of those boxers I’d probably touched. Seconds later he opened the closet wearing a gray tee and jeans. He put his finger to his lips, like I wasn’t supposed to talk.
“Come on,” he said loudly. “I’ll take you to Marcus.”
I followed him dumbly down the hall, my mind reeling in confusion. We walked through the doors and past a security troll to the elevator that would take us directly to Our World. We got in. Went down one floor, and the elevator lurched to a stop.
Dash had pushed the emergency button and taken off his shirt, throwing it over the small camera in the corner. Monitor #21, I believed. Not that, you know, I spent too much time staring at the camera in the elevator to the Princes’ Tower. Ahem.
“I’ll make this quick,” he said, looking down at me with a kind of longing that I found half intriguing, half freaky. But mostly intriguing. “I want to thank you for last night. You really saved me with that heads-up.”
Holy . . . ! I was gobsmacked. Dash was my prince? I’d been right? “So it was you?”
He grinned sheepishly, busted. “I don’t want to bring you into this any more than I have to. I just need to know you’re not going to tell . . .” He cocked his head toward the camera. “She’s monitoring my every move these days, so I think she’s on to me.”
“I’m not going to tell, and by the way, she thinks Marcus is you.” I showed him the letter. “And he’s being fired for it.”
Dash set his jaw and cursed. “That sucks. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Aside from showing up late every day for work, true. Also, I think even Lulu refuses to let him ride her. I think she’s insulted that he keeps falling off.”
I counted the seconds in my head. How long until the trolls came to start up the elevator? How long until the Queen observed that the camera had been grayed out by a Fruit of the Loom?
“There’s something else,” I added. “Jake the Hansel caught me after you left. And this morning I saw him slip a sealed envelope into the Box of Whine. I’m sure it details everything I said to you.”
“We need to get that, then.”
Well, duh. “We also need to get this elevator moving and the T-shirt back on your body. The Queen’s probably already radioed the trolls to investigate.”
“Don’t worry. One step ahead of you.” He punched the Restart button, and the elevator began to move. But he made no effort to get his shirt.
“This might seem kind of forward,” he said, coming closer, “but I think it’s the only way to throw them off.” Then he leaned down, paused for a second, and brought his lips to mine.
What? My eyelids flew wide open in shock.
He stepped back and grinned. “Okay?”
More than okay. Actually really nice. I smiled as the elevator doors flew open to two awaiting trolls. Dash swept his lips over mine again, only kissing me deeper. I did my part by throwing my arms around his bare neck. In the process I accidentally took a big whiff of that princely cologne.
Suddenly I became fixated on the softness of his mouth, the feel of his wet hair, how even the sound of us kissing sent me into a tailspin.
“Excuse us,” one of the trolls said gruffly. “You two coming out, or you gonna stay in there all day?”
Dash released me from his clutches, and I gasped for breath, my body weak and wobbly.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” he said, grabbing his shirt and pulling me through the trolls. “You know how young love is.”
He said young love!
The trolls snickered like they knew. Oh, boy, did they know. I had to bite back giggles of my own as the cologne’s effects gradually wore off and I became, again, fully functioning.
“Sorry about that,” Dash said, once we’d turned the corner to the hallway that led to the Box of Whine outside Personnel. “There didn’t seem like any other option.”
“It was fine.” I blinked away the fuzzy filter that made everything glow. “I, um, enjoyed your logic.”
“You’re all right, Kiefer. Now let’s go find the Hansel’s letter.”
The Box of Whine was a large, wooden box nailed to the wall outside Personnel. Since it was Sunday, Personnel was closed and the hallway vacant. We checked behind us. Dash threw his shirt over the camera again, and I opened the box with my master key. It was empty.
Dash peered in. “That’s not good.”
“Not good at all.” I closed the lid and locked it, trying to think what could have happened. “The Hansel must have given her a heads-up. She never gets her complaints this early.”
“Can’t you get the complaints before she does?”
“I could. . . . Unfortunately I was supposed to have delivered these letters to Marcus and Adele already.”
“Adele too?”
I drew a finger across my throat. “It might read Fairyland on the gates, but there’s no promise of happily ever after in this place. You know what the Queen told me the other day? That already half of the interns had disqualified themselves for one reason or another from the Dream and Do grant.”
Dash leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his damp hair. “I suppose she didn’t say who.”
“Nope. Anyway, I’ve got to deliver these summonses before the Queen has my head, and if you think that’s a metaphor, you don’t know my boss.”
“Anything I can do?” he asked as I headed toward Wardrobe.
“Oh, sure. Just find the troll with the complaints, knock him to the ground, get the Hansel letter, and give it to me by the end of the day. All without getting caught. No problem, right?”
“No problem.”
I’d meant it as a joke, of course. But apparently Dash was the type to take things literally.